Thanks for visiting my personal web page.
You almost certainly arrived here via my PONY ESPRESSO home page,
so you already know a little bit about me. This page is going
to tell you more than you could possibly want to know.
I am a single dad and plan to stay that way unless somebody truly
special comes along.

I was born in Oakland California on April
22, 1952... (do the math Einstein). I grew up in a town just
east of San Francisco called Danville, finished school in 1970,
and spent the next year living overseas. I moved to the Portland
area in May of 1972 and have been here ever since. Here are some
rather bizarre looking pictures of me, some with various animals
and girlfriends taken over the years. A smart-assed kid conspiring
some sort of mischief in 1958, high
school age, around 1969 or so, here
sporting the "Cousin It" look in northern Greece in
1971, holding my pet fox "Sly"
in 1972, with my girlfriend Leilani (this
picture is best titled VERY long hair; VERY short dress)
in 1974, visiting my parents in 1975, & at my brother's wedding in 1979 .

After almost 10 years working in a plywood
mill alongside men whose necks were as red as a Mandrill's butt,
I decided to try something a little more respectable. So in early
1981 I went to work for Fred Meyer at their Apparel Distribution
Center in Clackamas. Big mistake!!! After 13 years of
truly horrible working conditions (can you say "Big
Brother"? Sure you can), I decided to try going into business
for myself when Fred Meyer closed the warehouse.

In 1994, I vowed never to work in the corporate
world again. A few months before I left Fred Meyer, I mapped
out what I wanted to do, and how I was going to do it. With the
advice of guy who also had a mobile espresso business, I was
able to be up and running 5 months after I left Freddies.

I absolutely love what I do. I am my
own boss, I usually work around a 4-5 hour day, and I've made
some truly wonderful friends on my daily route.

In my spare time I like to putz around on
the computer doing graphics, (duh!) and I enjoy listening to
shortwave radio. There's nothing quite like hearing the facts
directly from the source.

I also enjoy ethnic cooking. I've been on
an Indian/Pakistani kick recently, but usually it's Arabic, Cambodian
or Thai cuisines. The spicier the better. And like most men of
my generation, I love sports cars. Keep your SUV's, Bimmers
and "sports" sedans, gimme a Ford GT any day. Check
out my Corvair pages for more on my
car addiction.

The two loves of my life are my daughter Lisa,
and my pet pot-bellied pig "Pancetta"
(usually in that order). Lisa's away at college now, so I'll
let her describe herself on her own page
(it's probably even more outdated than this one).

Some of my favorite music is probably James
Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, and various old stuff from the '60s. But
the best of all time has got to be the Beatles. When I was 13,
I was lucky enough to see them live at the Cow Palace in San
Francisco. In this picture taken that
night (I have no idea who took it), we were sitting just to the
right and slightly above the stage. It was awesome! I've
been a Beatles fanatic ever since.

Same with the Doors, the Grateful Dead, Janice
Joplin, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Youngbloods, Jimi
Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, The Yardbirds, etc. Growing up near
San Francisco in the 60's provided lots of opportunities to hear
the great rock stars of that era live on stage. Most Wednesday
mornings the Grateful Dead would give free "jam" concerts
in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. I managed to "elude"
school to attend them. In May of '68, there was a two day outdoor
concert held at the San Jose County Fairgrounds, so my brother
and I took our girlfriends to it. Check out the bands named in
this flyer (that for some reason I had
stashed away for thirty five years). Many of those names are
long gone, but some made it big, and are huge legends even today!
All for $6.00 per person... those were the days!

So much for the '60s. Currently, my favorite
author is Tom Clancy, although he's slipped in recent years.
My favorite movie of all time is "The Godfather", nothing
else even comes close, and a distant second is Lawrence
of Arabia.Honorable mentions go to Scent
of a Woman, & Forest Gump. No other film I've ever seen captured
the feel of the 60s so well; that soundtrack made it.

When time and money permits, I like to travel,
though I rarely get the chance. In 1962, when when I was just
ten years old, my parents blessed me and my older brother Mark
to an around the world trip, with nine months of that living
in Israel. It really opened my eyes. Then in 1970, I went back
and stayed another year in Israel living on a kibbutz. I did
everything from picking bananas and oranges, to hauling garbage,
all for room and board plus 29¢ per day. It was a simple,
but satisfying lifestyle. I made my way back home in the summer
of 1971, first by flying to Istanbul, then by any means possible
(walked, hitch-hiked, rode buses, trains, and boats... at one
point I even hitched a ride on a donkey cart in Yugoslavia) all
the way to London. Thirty years later, I pulled Lisa out of school
and took her on a trip to the Middle East. It was her first time
out of the country, but for me, it was pure nostalgia. Having
spent my youth scrambling over sand dunes looking for (and finding)
ancient Roman artifacts, it was high time to share that experience
with my daughter. Times have changed, and you're no longer allowed
to plunder the Mediterranean at your whim, but we still managed
to have a wonderful visit... and pulled off a teensy bit of plundering.
The Grand Bazaar in Istanbul; one of my favorite places on the
planet, is like going back in time to the days of the great Sultans
& Viziers; lots of sights, smells and beaucoup bargains to
be had... if you know what you're doing. It's an enormous
covered marketplace (several acres) with thousands of shops selling
everything from gold rings to goat skins. The place is constantly
shrouded with the smells of incense, spices, grilled foods from
sidewalk vendors, and exotic belly dancing music. In the Spring
of '05, I went to France for a week, then on to Italy, where
I picked up Lisa and her friend Aaron at the Milan airport. From
there, we toured Italy from Venice to Pompeii for ten days. It
was wonderful!!. The ultimate road trip... Below are some
pictures from these various sojourns.

For Shortwave radio nuts like me... HF/Radio
This site is a tremendous aid to the hobby. Type in a frequency,
and the web site tells you who you're listening to.

Tunisia I like the music on this site, but you'll need to
install the Realaudio
Player to hear it.

In 2002 I was blessed with a rather unwelcome
surprise... I was diagnosed with cancer. Well, sheeeit...
I went through four months of chemotherapy followed by three
months of radiation, and it now appears that I'm going to be
okay. The chemo was pretty nasty stuff, but I actually had a
harder time with the radiation. It messed up my throat and all
the mechanisms that allow me to do the things I like to do on
a daily basis... you know, like swallowing and breathing? It
damaged the upper part of my lungs and my trachea, but they tell
me that it should get better in time (keyword here: should).
Here's a picture of how I looked before and during my treatments. The first
two shots were taken in Maui the year before my diagnosis, the
last three just as I completed chemo. As you can see, I still
had some hair, but but not much. Man, I was sick! Notice
the goofy looking eyebrows and mustache and the "nobody's
home" expression on my whiter-than-Michael Jackson face.
I was so burned out from the treatment that the cancer didn't
seem so bad in comparison. I'm pretty much back to my normal
fuzzy self now. When my hair did finally start growing in again,
it was all curly. I looked like a black haired Barry Manilow!
Not a pretty sight... But it was only temporary. The breathing
problems still annoy me, but I guess that's a small price to
pay for being alive. I found a site on the web about my particular
type of cancer, and I thought it was both informative and funny
"Gary's
PISSED." If you or anybody in your family has any questions
about what to expect from chemotherapy, I highly recommend you
visit Gary's site.

And please check out my friend Robert's web
site; SteinyGuitars.com.
His occupation is building and repairing acoustic guitars, but
clearly, his passion goes well beyond music... he makes these
wonderful satirical buttons which he offers for a pittance. Here
are a couple of recent examples:

These are some recent photos of me (and my
family) on & off the job. Dashing devil; eh?

Yep, that's me inside my espresso
truck doing... what I do!

... And here sporting my winter growth

That's my Dad in the
hat! Is he a stylin' dude or what? This one was taken in 1996
on Kauai; my whole family met there for my parents 50th anniversary.

And this is the whole famn damily
(minus dad who took the shot and my niece Annika who was on a
Caribbean cruise at the time) in Alaska. We all met there in
the summer of '03 to celebrate my mom's 80th birthday. From the
left, yours truly (still with my curly hair), my older brother
Mark, my mother, Lisa, Mark's son Daniel, and my sister-in-law
Netty.